By Pierre Yves-Oudeyer and Frédéric Kaplan
Pierre-Yves Oudeyer
The analogy between language evolution and biological evolution has been proposed many times since Darwin’s theory of natural selection. Through the review of several computational models, we argue in this paper that this analogy must be brought down to the details, rather than remaining at a general verbal level, otherwise misconceptions may be formed. We also illustrate how operational conceptualizations of this analogy can set the ground for a refoundation of linguistics.
Date of publication: 15 October 2007

The empirical content of the notion of linguistic mental representations
Wolfram Hinzen
If we look at the empirical basis for positing ‘mental representations’ in the study of human linguistic competence, we find, firstly, that the assumption that there are innate representations essentially amounts to the refutation of a radical externalism. But the latter has no significance at least in the case of the study of linguistic competence, so nativism in this sense seems to be rather uncontentious; secondly, it is arguable that such representations are necessarily as 'natural' as anything is that fits into our best available explanatory schemes. In other words, it is not clear whether a question of naturalism arises for them. Furthermore, the idea that such representations are actually optimal responses to 'external pressures' has no empirical basis, since these representations have no 'relational' content at all. I argue that, despite all that, the notion of a linguistic representation within the language faculty is quite spectacularly interesting in many epistemological and metaphysical respects.
Date of publication: 9 July 2007

Representation in digital systems
Vincent C. Müller
There is much discussion about whether the human mind is a computer, whether a computer can have mental states at all, and whether at all physical entities are computers (pancomputationalism). I propose a criterion for which entities in this world are in digital states, and which of these are part of digital computers. A proper resolution requires a distinction of three levels of description (physical, syntactic, semantic) and the specification of what is a digital state on the syntactic level. On this basis, the proposed analysis is that a state is digital if and only if it is a token of a type that serves a particular function, typically but not necessarily a representational function for the system.
Date of publication: 25 June 2007

Population Thinking, Darwinism, and Cultural Change
Peter Godfrey-Smith
The application of Darwinian ideas to culture is discussed. I distinguish between populational, Darwinian, and replicator-based views of cultural change. Darwinian and non-Darwinian forms of social learning are discussed in the context of game-theoretic models of behavior. I also defend the importance of reproduction to Darwinism, responding to arguments by Bouchard.
Date of publication: 11 June 2007

Representational Requirements for Evolving Cultural Evolution
Joanna Bryson
Why are humans the only species exhibiting exponentially accumulative culture? Language obviously facilitates this process, but language is also an example of an accumulated cultural artifact, one far more elaborate and complex than any other evolved signalling system. We now know other species do regularly exploit culturally-transmitted behaviours, so the basic capacity of social learning is present in these species, and is further proved adaptive at least in limited forms. In this article I propose that for most species the adaptive rate of cultural evolution is bounded by ecological pressures, but that in the case of humans a uniquely rich representational substrate allowed the evolution of intricate norms and behaviours. This allows cultural evolution to find even complex sustainable behavioural strategies.
Date of publication: 28 May 2007

Content From Development
Nicholas Shea

Most human mental representations arise as a result of development. These developmental processes depend on rich interactions with the thinker’s environment. Are the details of those interactions part of what makes it the case that a particular representation has the content it does? For example, humans probably have a face recognition mechanism that allows us, on seeing some person X for a short time, subsequently to recognise X by their face. Plausibly, this piece of development results in a representation R which is about X (and not look-alikes) in virtue of it being X (rather than look-alikes) who interacted causally with the developmental mechanism that produced R.

If that is right, we can ask why. Millikan appeals to derived proper functions; Papineau to development being a selectional process similar to evolution. This web paper examines whether content is indeed fixed by circumstances of development and, if so, whether we should be applying an adaptation-based framework.
Date of publication: 14 May 2007

An Evolutionary Solution to the Radical Concept Nativism Puzzle
Murray Clarke
In The Language of Thought, Jerry Fodor infamously argued for radical concept nativism by suggesting that all of our primitive lexical concepts are innate. In Concepts, he defends informational atomism and rescinds radical concept nativism by offering a noncognitivist, metaphysical argument that is intended to show that we ‘acquire’ or ‘lock to’ concepts that are neither learned nor innate. I offer an evolutionary version of informational atomism in the context of Cosmides and Tooby’s evolutionary psychology and the massive modularity hypothesis. Like Fodor, I argue that primitive concepts are, neither learned nor innate, but 'acquired.' Unlike Fodor, I argue that such terms were 'acquired' in the Pleistocene environment of evolutionary adaptation (EEA).
Date of publication: 23 April 2007

Ideas that stand the [evolutionary] test of time.
Frédéric Bouchard
Evolutionary psychology, memetics and models of cultural evolution focus on reproductive success. I will argue that fitness should in fact focus on differential persistence of entities instead of differential reproductive success of replicators. Understanding evolution as such shifts the nature of adaptation from reproduction to persistence, changing the means by which representational powers would be selected in biological systems.
Date of publication: 26 March 2007

The complex vehicles of human thought and the role of scaffolding, internalisation and semiotics in human representation
Robert Clowes
In his article Language, embodiment, and the cognitive niche (2006) philosopher Andy Clark presents a picture of the human mind as supervening upon a complex material substrate composed in part of straightforwardly biological systems but also of animal-built structures. Clark's picture is compelling, but if we accept it, the task of understanding human cognition becomes somewhat different to that classically understood. Rather than needing to understand merely the principles of organisation of, say, a language of thought or even the means of neural representation, a proper science of the human mind becomes the search for the principles of operation of a motley assortment of representational vehicles and their processes of organisation, both within and across the border of the organism and through a variety of time scales. Central to this picture of niche-enhanced cognition is the intersection of language and mind. But what are the principles of organisation of this intersection? While there is no wide agreement on an overarching theory, a rough outline of some of the central means of organisation can be depicted. Toward this understanding I focus on three principles of the organisation of human representation which work – at different time-scales - across the interface of organism and its social embedding. These are semiotic dynamics, scaffolding and internalisation.
Date of publication: 26 February 2007

The Theory of Biological Adaptation and Function
Robert Brandon
Modern evolutionary biology provides a naturalistic account of adaptation and function. That account is sketched here. The basic concepts are reasonably clear. The devil is in the details.
Date of publication: 29 January 2007

The Evolution of Misbelief
Ryan McKay
This paper is co-authored by Daniel Dennett.

A prevailing assumption is that those beliefs which maximise survival will be those which best approximate reality. True beliefs are seen as adaptive beliefs, and false beliefs, or misbeliefs, are seen as dysfunctional and maladaptive. Contra this assumption, we explore the extent to which certain misbeliefs might in fact be adaptive, in which case we may have an evolved predisposition to form them.
Date of publication: 15 January 2007

Functions, Modules and Dissociation: A Quibble
Bruce Glymour
Two functional notions are introduced, and used to characterize the nature of evolutionary constraints. I argue that these constraints show that dissociation is a bad test of modularity: the kind of modularity dissociation tests for does not support the assumption that natural selection optimizes functional roles, and directs attention away from the variables most relevant to the evolution of behavior.
Date of publication: 11 December 2006

The Dynamic Nature of Representation
Mark Bickhard
Representation has emerged in evolution, and it likely emerges quotidianly in constructive processes of learning and development. Accounting for the possibility of such emergence is among the deepest contemporary challenges to naturalism. A model of representation is outlined, called interactivism, which accommodates a naturalistic evolutionary emergence. It is in the generally pragmatist tradition, though it differs in crucial ways from pragmatist notions of representation. It has resources for accounting for higher level forms of representation and cognition, such as of objects, abstractions, rationality, language, and so on.
Date of publication: 27 November 2006

Introduction
Anne Reboul
Adrianna Wozniak
In this paper, we argue that neither phylogenetic externalism, nor semantic externalism, which in its naturalist version is linked with it, can offer a guarantee of semantic adequacy for innate (or phylogenetically acquired) representations, though it can offer a guarantee for ontogenetically acquired (current) representations. This, we argue, is because the type of causality involved in phylogeny is not of the right type in that it does not link specific individuals or occurrences to specific representations.
Date of publication: 13 November 2006